In the midst of
teaching the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, by Mark Twain, I find it helpful for historical context and the
students’ fuller understanding to use primary documents as supplements to the
novel itself.I have embedded
these documents at various stages of the novel and use them for various
purposes, which I will explain.

The three types of appeals of persuasive
rhetoric, as well as other stylistic choices made by authors of that
rhetoric. (We have already introduced and evaluated this material in an
earlier unit.

Activity 1: (Where these fall in the novel is completely up to the
teacher. I will be inserting these in this order because of the way I teach
H.F. How you insert these readings is completely up to you and your
objectives.) Early on in the novel – maybe even before we start reading
the novel.

Break up into five groups. Each group will
receive a different speech.

The group will read their speech in class
and then evaluate it using the rubric marked “Speech Evaluation” in the
appendix. The speeches are
Abraham Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural,” Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone
Speech,” Frederick Douglas’ “July 5th Speech,” William
Salter’s sermon “Slavery and the Lessons of Recent Events,” and Leonard
F. Parker’s sermon “Challenges to Slavery.” All of these I’ve either
hyperlinked or have provided the transcript for in the materials
section. Most of these are in their complete form. I will be not always use the whole piece, but I left it up to
you to excerpt if you want.

They will be presenting their findings to
the class. This might take some time so I would plan on having the
presentations on a second day.

For next class period everyone will read
an excerpt from Frederick Douglass – the Covey incident. They will
also read one of the following slave narratives – James Curry,
Charlotta Gordon MacHenry Pyles, John Ross Miller. Some of these are in
the handout section. Some are hyperlinked.

Each student will be writing a response
comparing/contrasting Jim to these real people. Answering the question
is Jim a realistic slave or a stereotype?

Small group/large group discussion the
next day.

At the end of the book one of the essays
for the test will include this material.I’ve included the rubric for that
in the rubrics section.

Activity 3: Evaluating Huck’s motivation vs. real people (Since the
articles are relatively short I will do this in only one class period –
60 min.)

Once again I want students to
compare/contrast a character (Huck) to real life people. I again will
jigsaw the articles – small groups; each group will have a
different person who helped a fugitive slave escape. The people you use
might depend on where you are – I tried to pick people with Iowa
connections to help hook my students – Rev. John Todd, Sarah
Parker, letter to Elvira Gaston Platt, Ed Heizer and article “No
Questions Asked.”

Each group should read about their person
and fill out the handout that asks questions about them.

Then they will report back to the main
group. These reports will not be graded. I’m just using it for
information only.